Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/395

Rh could be increased in height by being drawn together, or rendered wider by being lowered: it was his intention to paint the picture in oil, on the wall, but he made a composition for the intonaco, or ground, which was so coarse that, after he had painted for a certain time, the work began to sink in such a manner as to induce Leonardo very shortly to abandon it altogether, since he saw that it was becoming spoiled.

Leonardo da Vinci was a man of very high spirit, and was very generous in all his actions: it is related of him that, having once gone to the bank to receive the salary which Piero Soderini caused to be paid to him every month, the cashier was about to give him certain paper packets of pence, but Leonardo refused to receive them, remarking, at the same time, “I am no penny-painter.” Not completing the picture, he was charged with having deceived Piero Soderini, and was reproached accordingly; when Leonardo so wrought with his friends, that they collected the sums which he had received and took the money to Piero Soderini with offers of restoration, but Piero would not accept them.

On the exaltation of Pope Leo X. to the chair of St. Peter, Leonardo accompanied the Duke Giuliano de’ Medici to Rome: the Pontiff was much inclined to philosophical inquiry, and was more especially addicted to the study of alchemy: Leonardo, therefore, having composed a kind of paste from wax, made of this, while it was still in its half-liquid state, certain figures of animals, entirely liollow and exceedingly slight in texture, which he then filled with air. When he blew into these figures he could make them fly through the air, but when the air within had escaped from them they fell to the earth. One day the vine-dresser of the Belvedere found a very curious lizard, and for this creature Leonardo constructed wings, made